Werner Siemens Realgymnasium
| Werner Siemens Realgymnasium | |
|---|---|
.JPG) The front of the building at the corner of Hohenstaufen and Münchener Strasse |
|
| type of school | Realgymnasium |
| founding | 1903 |
| address |
Hohenstaufenstrasse 47/48 |
| place | Berlin-Schöneberg |
| country | Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Coordinates | 52 ° 29 '39 " N , 13 ° 20' 32" E |
| student | 382 (as of 1931) |
| management | Wilhelm Wetekamp , 1906–1919 |
| Website | Official school history |
The Werner Siemens Realgymnasium (short: WSRG ) was a state high school in the Schöneberg district of Berlin . It was founded and directed by left-liberal reform educators . Over half of the students came from the Jewish intelligentsia of the surrounding Bavarian quarter . The school was closed in 1935. Today the Georg von Giesche School is housed in the building.
history
The grammar school was founded in March 1903 under the school reformer Wilhelm Wetekamp at Hohenstaufenstrasse 47/48. From 1906 he was its director. He strove for enlightened thinking and a renunciation of drill and the spirit of submission, and led the school according to the reform pedagogical Frankfurt curriculum of the school reformer Karl Reinhardt . This included French as the first foreign language, a focus on handicrafts and handicrafts, as well as lively, practice-oriented teaching. In 1909 he was the first in Prussia to introduce a student council at the school, and promoted the establishment of student associations. In addition to the parents, the pupils should be involved in shaping school life. School celebrations, school trips and school theater productions were also an integral part of the educational program.
The school name was reminiscent of the inventor, industrialist and co-founder of the German Progressive Party (DFP), Werner von Siemens . The teaching staff included prominent representatives of reform pedagogy, among them from 1911 to 1923 Franz Hilker , the founder of comparative educational science and later editor of the journal Bildung und Erbildung . The Bund decided school reformers (BESch) was founded in September 1919 in the teacher's room.
Social and political commitment were taken for granted at the school: the students regularly donated their second sandwich to a Friedrichshain elementary school, which received around 150 sandwiches a day. In 1928, students and teachers allegedly campaigned for free love and homosexual freedom of religion for students aged 16 and over. In reality, this had been put under the control of the school in order to cast it in a bad light.
Like the surrounding Bavarian Quarter, the liberal reform school was a magnet for Jewish families. In 1931, 212 of the 382 students were Jewish. They came not only from the immediate vicinity of the school, but also from more distant urban areas such as the district of Grunewald .
The takeover of power by the National Socialists marked a sharp turning point for the WSRG. Jewish and Nazi-critical teachers were dismissed from school, the school director forcibly retired . After the fire in the Reichstag , he gave a speech to schoolchildren that the National Socialists had set fire to parliament. Jewish students emigrated from Germany with their families. Other Jewish families could no longer finance their children to attend school because they were denied exemption or reduction in school fees. In 1934 the number of Jewish students had dropped to 72 and the upper school was closed due to a “lack of students ”. In May 1935, the Werner Siemens Realgymnasium was closed by the National Socialists. The school building was then used as a vocational school for girls. In 1970 the Georg von Giesche School moved. High school technical branch there.
In 1994, a plaque commemorating the Werner-Siemens-Realgymnasium was placed over a side entrance of the building on Hohenstaufenstrasse. At the suggestion of the association of former students and teachers of the Werner Siemens Realgymnasium , the Malwida von Meysenbug School in Nikolassee , which was then named after the German writer Malwida von Meysenbug , took on the name Werner von Siemens Oberschule in 1967 and committed itself to the To continue the tradition of the WSRG.
Former students
- Yakov Malkiel , Linguist and Romance Studies, Professor University of California, Berkeley
- Chaim Arlosoroff , Zionist politician
- Marcel Reich-Ranicki , literary critic and head of the literary department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
- Heinrich Schulte , psychiatrist, head of the Bremen city mental hospital
- George Salter , commercial graphic artist, Professor Cooper Union School of Art , New York
- Margarete Sommer , managing director of the relief organization at the Episcopal Ordinariate Berlin , Righteous Among the Nations
- Erich Sternberg , geriatric psychiatrist , Neuropsychiatric Research Institute of the USSR
- Hans Wallach , experimental psychologist, member of the National Academy of Sciences
- Hans Nathan , musicologist, professor at Michigan State University
- Rolf Schwedler , Berlin Senator for Building and Housing
- Richard Rudolf Walzer , classical philologist, philosopher and orientalist, member of the British Academy
- Wolfgang Yourgrau , social psychologist, physicist and journalist, Professor University of Denver
- Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt , music critic, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
literature
- Wilhelm Wetekamp: Self- activity and creativity in education and teaching: with special consideration of the first year of school . Teubner, Leipzig 1908.
- 25 years Werner-Siemens-Realgymnasium , Berlin-Schöneberg 1928.
- Reinhold Kockjoy: The schools and their teachers in… Schöneberg and Friedenau . o. O. 1958.
- Wilhelm Richter: Berlin School History: From the Medieval Beginnings to the End of the Weimar Republic . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-7678-0538-3 .
- Marcel Reich-Ranicki : My life . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-421-05149-6 .
- Wolfgang Yourgrau: I smiled when these Teutomans were making fun of the word “German” . (PDF; 2.4 MB) In: Sylke Bartmann, Ursula Blömer, Detelef Garz (eds.): We were the state youth but the state was weak . University of Oldenburg, 2003, ISBN 3-8142-0865-X , pp. 71-85.
- "The lost school" rediscovered . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 15, 1994.
Movies
- Exclusion of Jews and non-Jews at the Werner Siemens Realgymnasium , 1994, Schöneberger Museum
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The Werner-Siemens-Realgymnasium (1903-1935) - the "vanished school". ( Memento from October 3, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Website of the Georg von Giesche School
- ↑ Thorsten Eitz, Isabelle Engelhardt: Discourse history of the Weimar Republic: With a foreword by Georg Stötzel. Volume 2 . Georg Olms Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-487-15189-2 ( google.de [accessed on January 2, 2017]).